


an empirical overview

by presumenothing (justjoy)



Series: pokeani fics [2]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Anime), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pocket Monsters: Sword & Shield | Pokemon Sword & Shield Versions
Genre: 1 Sentence Fiction, Canon Compliant, Friendship, Gen, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:34:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25110205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justjoy/pseuds/presumenothing
Summary: #01: Maybe because of how they first met, Gou tends to think of Ash as someone who’s always in motion, but objectively he knows that Ash can actually stay surprisingly still sometimes – like now, as he’s talking quietly to Pikachu and Riolu in a corner.#02: “It’s beensowarm lately, see,” Ash explains sheepishly, helping Chloe up from where the sudden wind had knocked her over, “so I thought that maybe if Dragonite used Hurricane hard enough, it might help things cool off a little…?”Gou, Chloe, and a study in Ash.(Then again, science has always been a two-way mirror.)
Relationships: Gou | Goh & Sakuragi Koharu | Chloe Cerise, Gou | Goh & Satoshi | Ash Ketchum, Sakuragi Koharu | Chloe Cerise & Satoshi | Ash Ketchum
Series: pokeani fics [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1809646
Comments: 9
Kudos: 273





	1. 01-10

**Author's Note:**

> prompts borrowed from the [1sentence comm on LJ](https://1sentenceorder.livejournal.com/1531.html). more whenever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> #01: Maybe because of how they first met, Gou tends to think of Ash as someone who’s always in motion, but objectively he knows that Ash can actually stay surprisingly still sometimes – like now, as he’s talking quietly to Pikachu and Riolu in a corner.

**01: motion**

Maybe because of how they first met, Gou tends to think of Ash as someone who’s always in motion, but objectively he knows that Ash can actually stay surprisingly still sometimes – like now, as he’s talking quietly to Pikachu and Riolu in a corner.

**02: cool**

“It’s been _so_ warm lately, see,” Ash explains sheepishly, helping Chloe up from where the sudden wind had knocked her over, “so I thought that maybe if Dragonite used Hurricane hard enough, it might help things cool off a little…?”

**03: young**

They’re the same age – or at least Ash _says_ they’re the same age, however reliable that might be – and yet sometimes Gou feels so… young, and not in a good way, next to Ash’s obvious experience and knowledge.

**04: last**

She’ll never say it aloud (and definitely not anywhere Gou might hear) but Chloe honestly had never expected the friendship between him and Ash to last; Gou’s interest in pokemon over people isn’t the only reason for his lack of friends, but she couldn’t deny that it _had_ always been a big part of it.

**05: wrong**

It takes a while for Gou to admit it, even to himself, but eventually he acknowledges that Ash knows one important thing that he doesn’t: how to be wrong and still pick yourself up with a smile anyway.

**06: gentle**

Prior to meeting Ash’s Pikachu, Chloe hadn’t actually thought that a pokemon could be so skilled in battling (though she hadn’t seen anything near its full power, Gou insisted) and still be gentle enough to let Yamper nuzzle it every time in greeting.

**07: one**

“I mean, Eevee isn’t any _less_ awesome because it has so many different evolutions, and even pokemon who have one straight evolutionary line have all these regional forms, and – uh, I forgot where I was going with this, actually, but my point is that it’s totally okay even if you haven’t decided what you’re gonna be yet!”

**08: thousand**

Seeing Ash choke after stuffing an inadvisable amount of croissant into his mouth (and Pikachu whacking his back with its tail without missing a beat) would’ve been enough to make anyone question whether he really was one of the thousand strongest Trainers in the world, if Gou hadn’t seen the battle with his own eyes.

**09: king**

The title of Pokemon Master has always sounded pretentious to her, like some king lording it over his subjects, but from what Chloe has seen Ash isn’t like that with his pokemon at all.

**10: learn**

“Well, maybe I’d actually bother with class if we were learning about pokemon instead!” Gou declares pointedly after Ash tells them about his school in Alola, and Chloe rolls her eyes instead of retorting _so says the same person who wouldn’t shut up and let Professor Oak talk about pokemon?_


	2. 11-21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> #11: Chloe watches Ash and Pikachu zip by in twin blurs, past a completely-unbothered Mr Mime, and wonders if she can somehow reduce the amount of sugar in their breakfast – it’s not like either of them _need_ the extra energy anyway.

**11: blur**

Chloe watches Ash and Pikachu zip by in twin blurs, past a completely-unbothered Mr Mime, and wonders if she can somehow reduce the amount of sugar in their breakfast – it’s not like either of them _need_ the extra energy anyway.

**12: wait**

The fifteen minutes Gou spends waiting for Professor Cerise to come pick them in his car, with an unresponsive and feverish Ash by his side, are the longest in his life.

**13: change**

No matter how many times he sees Ash go from his usual self to a terrifyingly capable battler in the blink of an eye, the change always takes his breath away.

**14: command**

It takes a while of watching them before Chloe can pin down the difference in the way they each interact with their pokemon – Gou gives commands as plain instructions; Ash plays his like cards from a deck that only he and his pokemon know.

**15: hold**

She’s seen more of Gou in the last five weeks since they barreled back to the institute claiming to have ridden Lugia than in the entire five months prior, and part of Chloe _wants_ to be jealous at Ash for having done that, but she can’t hold it against him.

**16: need**

For all that Ash says he can’t get complicated stuff, it’s not always true – you just need to take out the jargon and use concrete examples instead of abstract ones, Chloe realises after seeing him in animated discussion with her dad over some pokemon theory.

**17: vision**

The seamless way in which Ash and Pikachu work together is enough to make Gou wonder if they’re psychically sharing their vision somehow (and that’s even before he meets Greninja and realises it’s not as impossible as he first thought).

**18: attention**

Chloe wonders about how Riolu can seem to catch Ash’s attention from across the park when he’s not even looking; later Gou tells her about how Ash somehow sensed Riolu even in its egg, but that still explains _nothing at all._

**19: soul**

Gou has never believed in things like souls or Aura (as anything besides the energy quantifiable in an Aura Sphere, at least), but after everything he’s seen since meeting Ash, he can’t dismiss them quite so easily either.

**20: picture**

“Well, I learned how to teach Double Team really quickly from this ninja in Kalos, actually,” Ash answers when Gou asks, and the words would’ve made absolutely no sense coming from anyone else but somehow he can _totally_ picture that happening to Ash.


	3. 21-30

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> #21: Gou’s first impression of Ash had been of an enthusiastic but somewhat foolish Trainer… needless to say, he’s revised this (and majorly so) since then.

**21: fool**

Gou’s first impression of Ash had been of an enthusiastic but somewhat foolish Trainer… needless to say, he’s revised this (and majorly so) since then.

**22: mad**

“I think it’s been good for him, being around someone his age who’s just as mad about pokemon,” she says when her father asks, and mentally adds _now if only they could stop egging each other on to do ridiculous things, jeez!_

**23: child**

Gou has always hated it when people tell him to _lighten up_ and _be more like a child_ ; he supposes it’s not a problem Ash has ever had, though.

**24: now**

“I know some people think living in the now is a bad thing, and I’ve definitely screwed up a couple times because I didn’t plan ahead far enough, but,” Ash shrugs a little helplessly, “it’s the only way I know how to be, y’know?”

**25: shadow**

It’s one of those days when Ash seems to have some sort of shadow hanging over him (a metaphorical one, not Gengar’s literal one) and blotting out the brightness in his smile, but Gou has learned not to ask what’s wrong because Ash won’t give an answer anyway.

**26: goodbye**

It’s not until Gou sees Ash saying a reluctant goodbye to Korrina and her grandfather that the reality finally sinks in: Ash didn’t just spend a day or two in Shalour City, let alone the whole of Kalos.

**27: hide**

“Well yeah, I guess it _is_ hide-and-seek,” Ash admits, and Chloe is starting to regret having agreed to help out now, “but we blindfolded Riolu so it can only use Aura to find everyone, and I wanted it to get some practice sensing humans it’s not as familiar with, see?”

**28: fortune**

Winning the World Championships would mean a fortune in prize earnings alone, even if you didn’t include the fame and sponsorships that’d surely come with it, but Chloe is absolutely certain that’s not even remotely why Ash is so determined to beat Champion Leon.

**29: safe**

Even if they somehow always end up safe in the end, some of the things Team Rocket have done could’ve ended very badly for everyone, and Gou is sure he hasn’t seen the least of it; he has no idea how Ash can still be so earnestly friendly with them.

**30: ghost**

“Really, it’s fine!” Chloe says, but Ash crosses his arms and looks sternly at Gengar until the ghost-type pokemon apologises to her and Yamper for scaring them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> having a bit of fun(?) trying to find alternative interpretation of some of these aha


	4. 31-40 [cerise edition]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> #31: Cerise had known from the moment he took both of them on as research fellows that there’d be differences between them, but still he can’t help a quiet laugh when he looks in on the breakfast table one morning to find Ash and Gou in deep disagreement ( _look, this book says it’s impossible, you must’ve seen it wrong!_ ).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in which i wanted to include maybe three sentences for professor cerise, but then he took over the whole chapter.
> 
> also, i considered making up a first name for him but eh, names. so cerise it still is.

**31: book**

Cerise had known from the moment he took both of them on as research fellows that there’d be differences between them, but still he can’t help a quiet laugh when he looks in on the breakfast table one morning to find Ash and Gou in deep disagreement ( _look, this book says it’s impossible, you must’ve seen it wrong!_ ).

**32: eye**

Ash might not be as adept with numbers as the rest of the team, but he’s clearly got a natural eye for things worth researching, and Cerise catches himself wondering if he can take advantage of that by making their data displays more intuitive somehow.

**33: never**

When he’d realised that Professor Oak’s “extra guest” to the opening was the inaugural Alola Champion, the most Cerise had expected was a chance to eventually study a championship team up close; never in a hundred years had he expected Ash Ketchum.

**34: sing**

Even with everything that’s happened since Ash’s arrival, it’s not until some weeks later that his name first comes up in a conference call with his colleagues, and Cerise is bemused to find more than one person singing praises of him (though none more so than the Alolan professors, of course).

**35: sudden**

Delia Ketchum is clearly quite accustomed to giving her son a level of independence that Cerise can’t imagine freely allowing Chloe for all that they’re the same age, and he supposes that a research fellowship in the next town over (however suddenly it’d been offered) must seem like nothing next to Ash’s previous trips… but the ease with which she’d agreed still unsettles him a little, somehow.

**36: stop**

It’s not until he stops to tally up their research expenses for the month that Cerise realises that he _really_ has been spending more for Ash and Gou than is strictly needed for research, even despite the reduced-price tickets offered by the World Championships (as a professional courtesy, just as the Leagues do) – he makes a note to get Chloe something nice too so she won’t feel left out.

**37: time**

He’s known about Gou’s aim of catching Mew ever since the day he and Chloe came back chattering about the camp in Pallet, but this is the first time Cerise actually finds himself believing that Gou might actually encounter the legendary again (though catching it still seems highly improbable).

**38: wash**

Cerise has tried telling Mr. Mime on at least three separate occasions by now that it doesn’t need to do the chores or wash the laundry in exchange for staying here, but apparently Ash’s pokemon are as eccentric as their trainer… then again, he’s not actually sure if Ash even _is_ Mr. Mime’s trainer, officially speaking?

**39: torn**

Cerise knows that Chloe’s always been rather torn about following his footsteps into the pokemon industry; hopefully, having Ash and Gou around will help show her that there are lots of different ways to get involved with pokemon, if that’s what she eventually chooses.

**40: history**

One of these days, Cerise thinks, he _really_ needs to get Ash to stay put long enough so they can get a full history of his travels for once, rather than being caught by surprise every time Ash casually mentions yet another should-be-impossible thing he’d seen somewhere or other.


	5. 41-50 [end]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> #41: It’s easy to watch Ash battling (especially with Pikachu) and think that the sheer power of his pokemon is the deciding factor behind his victories; Gou makes the same mistake at first, until he sees Ash facing off against those more evenly-matched with him in raw strength and realises it’s his tactical flexibility that clinches him the win.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and we return to the regular programming for the last part of this collection
> 
> minor spoiler alert for most recent episodes!!

**41: power**

It’s easy to watch Ash battling (especially with Pikachu) and think that the sheer power of his pokemon is the deciding factor behind his victories; Gou makes the same mistake at first, until he sees Ash facing off against those more evenly-matched with him in raw strength and realises it’s his tactical flexibility that clinches him the win.

**42: bother**

Professor Cerise’s office door being half-closed means he’s on a work call and shouldn’t be bothered outside of emergencies – it’s a rule Gou’s known for ages, but he doesn’t realise that nobody’s told _Ash_ until they’re passing by the ajar door one afternoon and Ash suddenly darts off into the office to exclaim _Professor Kukui, alola!_

**43: god**

Chloe can’t say that she really understands the way some people practically treat legendary pokemon like gods, but she _does_ know how extremely scarce even sightings like theirs had been – and yet on the rare occasions that Ash does mention a legendary, he talks about them like old friends.

**44: wall**

Gou doesn’t need Chloe to tell him (though she has multiple times) that he has too much of a wall between him and everyone else; he just hadn’t seen any reason to build a door in it until Ash came along.

**45: naked**

On some level Chloe can’t deny that she’d been waiting for Ash to screw up _some_ how (it’s more about Gou’s tendency to set things on pedestals than anything against Ash himself) but she doesn’t expect it to happen with Pikachu, and she only feels a little bad about scolding him for three whole minutes after seeing the naked worry in his eyes for his missing partner.

**46: drive**

Gou wonders if he can convince Professor Cerise to drive them over to Pallet Town someday (or maybe they could just take the train over?) because he wants to see the place where Ash had come from, and he’s sure Chloe is curious too.

**47: harm**

Even after the entire incident with Pidove, Chloe mulls over it for a few days before asking Ash if he could teach her the basics of battling; her personal reservations aside, Chloe knows she’d never forgive herself if Yamper got harmed because she froze up at the wrong moment.

**48: precious**

It’s not until Gou’s looking through the camera roll on his phone one rainy afternoon that he realises how precious few photos he has of Ash, and only the ones they’d used to document research findings like the shedding skins on Dragonite Island.

**49: hunger**

As with everything else, he and Chloe have their differences in opinion about Ash, but there’s one thing they can agree on: neither of them understands _how_ Ash can eat so much at meals and yet still be hungry enough to be snacking all the time.

* * *

**50: believe**

Ash won’t lie – when he left Alola he’d really believed that he wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while, because his time in Alola had been irreplaceable, in yet a different way to all his trips before… and that’s still true, but he’s glad he came with Professor Oak to Vermillion City anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> of course i couldn't end it without something from ash himself… aaaand that's all folks! whew that turned out way longer than expected for a 1-sentence thing
> 
> thanks for reading, and i don't know if i'll be writing any more pokeani fics after this (more accurately i don't ever know what i'll be writing next in general) but feel free to subscribe the series, anything else i write will be there

**Author's Note:**

> #me knocking on the writers' door at 2am: please....... more chloe.....


End file.
